Description
Book SynopsisIt is truly an ancient debate: Is it better to be active or contemplative? With Action vs. Contemplation, Jennifer Summit and Blakey Vermeule address the question in a refreshingly unexpected way: by refusing to take sides.
Trade Review"A fascinating and inspiring tour of big ideas--worth both contemplating and acting on."--Sarah Bakewell, author of At the Existentialist Cafe "Action versus Contemplation brings a cooling sense of balance to a whole range of important and often highly polarized arguments about technology, work, education, and more. How liberating to discover that we don't need to choose between nostalgia and philistinism, Captain Ludd and Dr. Pangloss. Even better, the authors give us not just historical elaborations of the theoretical complementarity of action and contemplation, but actual, already-existing examples of the middle position at work today. They show us that, no matter how 'soulless' society seems to become, meaning-seeking behavior does and always will continue."--William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep "This is a very subtle and surprising book that nevertheless goes down easy because you expect it to take a side in a binary (i.e., to take your side), but instead it seeks to transcend that binary. There's great generosity of spirit in their writing and thinking, and that generosity will have a salutary effect on all those whose thinking this book will touch. Action versus Contemplation is itself a contemplative document meant to intervene in the world it addresses, to get us to rethink practical matters, and to act in ways that will promote thinking. It urges action as a way of thinking, and thinking as a way of acting, and is a model of what it advocates for." --William Flesch, Brandeis University
